


Waking Life

by LittleMuse



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-09 09:10:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMuse/pseuds/LittleMuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I won't have you doing this because you think it inevitable."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> I think it should definitely be noted that I've not read the books yet, so please be forgiving of anything beyond show canon. This is a oneshot for now, but I might very well go places with it.

Jojen stares. Sometimes it feels as though he has spent his entire life on the outside, looking in.

 _Watchers, they ought to call you,_ Meera told him once, _instead of seers._ And she was right, for all she was no more than ten years old at the time.

Bran stirs and Summer lifts his head, ears pricked. He glances at Jojen, and as if pleased to find someone else seeing to things, settles back down with a huff. The wolf’s trust is telling and priceless, Jojen knows. And uneasy though Jojen still is with it, not misplaced. Bran is safe with him. Or at least not unsafe.

Bran’s brow furrows and Jojen is reaching to smooth his hair before he realizes. He stops himself, just shy. He’s never wanted to reach before coming here, not in waking life.

Bran starts and this time wakes, unsettled but calm. His eyes fall on Jojen and then immediately skitter away. Jojen never knows how closely to sit. After frightening dreams, Bran has always seemed grateful to have someone near, but these dreams are different, and Jojen doesn’t have to share them to know which nights are which.

Bran surprises him though, which Jojen is not hesitant to admit is hard to do. “Is it real?” he says, eyes still averted, and Jojen considers feigning confusion. It never does suit him, though; he suspects Bran would know.

He’s been very careful not to share these dreams. Bran is young and doesn’t always know the difference between wishes and visions yet and for now, Jojen would keep it that way. The boy has more important burdens to bear than this. But this moment was always coming.

“It always is,” Jojen tells the fire. He learned long ago that any time he finds himself wondering if a dream will come true, it means he already knows it will. That Bran assumes Jojen even knows what he’s asking about means he’s learning that as well.

He thought at first that Bran was staring at his own lap, avoiding Jojen’s eyes. Now he sees that he’s watching their hands, resting mere inches apart on the furs. Jojen understands that. The dream fades, but the familiarity, the feelings, they linger and have no place here. Not yet.

He was in love with this boy long before he met him.

“You could have told me,” Bran says, and finally meets his gaze, eyes stern. He resolutely holds it, even though it takes obvious effort, and Jojen finds himself thinking that he’s sorry he never got to meet Eddard Stark.

He gives a listless shrug. “When,” he says, and really means _what for_. It would have served nothing. If Bran even believed him.

“You could have tried,” Bran insists, because he understands, but doesn’t yet trust, that not everything is learned by experience. Jojen didn’t have to try to know how Bran would have reacted, how anyone would have. Knowing where he’s going doesn’t mean he’s there yet, especially when it comes to other people.

He sighs and shakes his head. “Don’t you think I wanted to?” he whispers and knows that’s gotten through by the way Bran swallows and looks away again.

For a moment, Jojen thinks they might be finished for tonight. Then Bran surprises him again. “You must be used to waiting for everyone to catch up,” he says. “And tired of it.”

Jojen blinks. “Yes,” he admits. Bran must be a little used to it himself now, and will only grow more so.

Bran looks at him again. “You don’t have to wait, with me,” he says.

And if Jojen wasn’t gone before, he would be now. He makes himself breathe through it.

“Tempting though that is to believe, my prince,” he says with a mirthless smile, “we cannot share everything.”

He still has futile hopes that some of these things won’t come to pass. That they will accomplish all they set out to do, that this war will end in days instead of years, that people won’t die. That Bran will never love him. He will keep what he can to himself, delay or even spare any pain.

“It certainly seems like we will.”

The tone is downright petulant and Jojen laughs even though Bran is entirely in earnest. “And how far have you seen, little lord?”

Bran glares at him. There was no malice in the words, but Jojen won’t deny the title was intentional. “Don’t call me that,” he says, and then shuffles, clearly embarrassed. “You know what I’ve seen.”

Oh yes, Jojen knows all too well. There are still mornings he wakes and can still taste Bran’s mouth, feel him beneath him, swears he can feel his back twinge with fingernail tracks.

“Yes,” he whispers, half to himself. “But not how far. Have you seen the end of the war? Your wedding day? The birth of your children?” Bran stares at him, speechless. “Few of those do you share with me.” He almost tells him few of those does he live to see, but he bites his tongue and turns away.

It’s not _fair_ is what he really doesn’t say. Many people do nothing more than plod through their lives, but they at least have some sense of hope that they will do more, have more. To know when he will die, to know what he will have and what he will not, is a weight beyond measure. And he’s never wanted more, never asked for more, and now here’s the one thing he would ask it for, and it would achieve _nothing_. There is not one piece of happiness he can call his own and no other’s. And when he is gone, he will leave nothing behind of himself, because he was never really here at all.

The feel of Bran’s fingers brushing his startles him. They’re soft but for faint shooting callouses, and entirely too familiar. Jojen turns his hand over and their fingers slot like a lock and key.

Bran levers himself up until he can wrap another hand around Jojen’s neck, pressing their foreheads together. The silence feels intentional. Jojen wonders what they’re mourning, if it’s the same thing.

And then Bran shifts forward and Jojen tugs back.

“No,” he says, sudden, because he had been so close to letting him. No. Because Bran is young, because Bran cannot understand the difference between what he might feel and what he does feel. Because if Jojen can claim one thing for himself in this world, it will be that he saw to Bran’s happiness. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, allows himself another moment of breathing against Bran’s lips, of imagining giving in. Then he pulls back entirely.

“Sleep,” he says, a bit surprised at how steady his voice sounds. He reaches for a stick to poke at the fire.

Bran is still for a long time. “You’ll be here?” he asks.

Jojen stabs at the embers. “I’ll be here,” he says.

He feels and hears Bran lie back down, but he does not look. Some time later, when he does, Bran is asleep, breathing even and face turned toward Jojen like he fell asleep watching him. Across the fire, Summer stares at Jojen and Jojen stares back.


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here I am. Goin' places with it. We'll see how this goes, lol. If you guys are out there and reading, please do respond; we're so new and few.

“What in the seven hells did you do to him?”

Meera sounds entirely amused and Jojen can only offer up silent thanks that she saw fit to keep her voice down. She doesn’t even look up from the rabbits she’s set aside for skinning; this is only making conversation, for her.

Jojen glances across their makeshift camp, where Bran is settled with Rickon and Hodor is hanging a canvas for shelter. He can already feel the occasional drop of water. Osha looks their way as Jojen is looking theirs. She’s obviously noticed Bran’s mood as well.

Jojen clears his throat and tugs at the stubborn strings of his bedroll. “Nothing,” he says.

“Is that the problem?”

“Meera,” he snaps without looking at her and she falls silent. He can feel her smile fade, sense her eyes on his back now. He purposely doesn’t meet them.

“What aren’t you telling me?” she asks then, and Jojen sighs.

“Many things. Leave it.” He rubs thumb and forefinger into his eyes. He’s too tired for this. They travel by day and rest by night, but he hasn’t dared a decent night’s sleep in a week for fear of what he might see, or worse, what he might share. The shame of it is that the longer he goes on like this, the less control he has when he finally does sleep.

And he’s not helping Bran this way. He’s no use to anyone this way.

“You’re not sleeping, are you?”

He says nothing.

“You’re afraid of a little boy now, then?”

He huffs an ironic laugh. “Yes.”

“Well,” she says, tugging a rabbit’s legs open with an unsettling crack, “I don’t think that’s one I can solve with a knife.” And she slices a clean line up its belly.

And so, because she’s quite right, Jojen beds down near Bran that night. By then, it’s begun to rain, and Jojen suspects Bran believes he’s only trying to escape it. He turns his face away from Jojen and closes his eyes.

“I can go,” Jojen says, because he hadn’t thought until then that Bran can’t. It’s the closest they’ve come to acknowledging this aloud since that night.

“No,” Bran says, jaw tight. “It’s raining.”

Rickon lifts his head from Shaggydog’s flank and frowns at them both. “Why are you angry?” he asks his brother.

“I’m not angry.”

“Hush, Rickon,” Osha says then, accusing eyes on Jojen. “Sleep now.”

Rickon does. And then Bran does. Hodor snores and Osha dozes while Meera prowls in the nearby trees, taking first watch. Jojen shuts his eyes and listens to the sounds of the forest. Bran’s breathing becomes the melody and the chirps and the snaps and the rain the harmony.

When he opens his eyes again, it doesn’t even feel like he’s slept. He can still hear the rain, but it’s freezing, and when he looks outside the tent, it’s turned to snow, white against the night.

He rolls his head back again to find Bran turned toward him, staring at him. Jojen’s brow furrows and he opens his mouth to ask when the snow started, or to tell Bran to go back to sleep.

“ _Are you ever going to tell me what’s wrong?_ ” Bran asks.

Jojen hesitates. “No,” he says without knowing why, suddenly misses home without knowing why.

Bran looks older when he frowns. He reaches for Jojen’s hand. “ _Show me, then._ ”

Jojen tugs away. “No,” he says, and sits up.

Both wolves lift their heads and Bran turns over, rubbing a hand down his face. He blinks at Jojen. The rain patters beyond their shelter and Meera now sleeps against the post Osha once did. Jojen swallows.

“What’s the matter?” Bran asks groggily and Jojen shudders.

“Nothing,” he says. But he feels heavy, feels like he misses Bran even though he’s right beside him, even though he’s spent so much more time without him than with him. “Go back to sleep.”

“Please don’t lie to me.” The words manage to be more command than plea.

“Nothing I want to share, then.”

“Right,” Bran says. “I forgot. We only share if I do the sharing.”

Jojen sighs. “I’m only trying to make things easier for you.” When he was young, he would have given anything for a guide, someone to help him with his dreams.

“And who makes things easier for you?” Bran sits up beside him. “I didn’t ask to be protected. Is it – was it about me?”

It’s not embarrassment that creates the hitch in his voice, not anymore. It’s sheer reluctance. After the way Jojen has avoided him, he can hardly blame Bran, either.

“I know you don’t want to talk about that,” Bran adds, like that might help. Gone is the lord, in that statement. He sounds so young. When Jojen looks, Bran is near enough to lean his head on his shoulder if he were so inclined, but he’s not looking at him. 

But surely Bran knows. Even if he can’t hear Jojen’s thoughts in dreams or feel his feelings without sharing, Jojen has seen what he’s seen before. The way Jojen looked at him, touched him, whispered to him, the way he _will_ – 

And he can’t have Bran attached to him, he can’t, but he can’t have this either.

He’s reaching out without thinking, cupping a hand under Bran’s ear, and Bran looks surprised, even more so when Jojen tells him, “Look at me, my love.”

Bran looks, eyes roving all over Jojen’s face.

“There are many things I don’t want,” Jojen says, thinking of all the things to come. “You are not one of them.”

Bran’s fingers scrabble at his collar, tighten and loosen, then smooth along his neck. “Show me, then,” he breathes, and Jojen kisses him both to chase away the dreams and because he can’t not.


	3. III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the lovely reviews, guys; keep 'em comin'. :)

And oh, it feels so good to _take_ , for once, to bury his fingers in Bran’s hair and drown. 

Bran whimpers against his mouth and clumsily opens his in the process, gasping when Jojen dips his tongue in and clinging to his shoulders like a raft in a river. His fingers slip into the neck of Jojen’s jerkin and rest there, against the flutter of his pulse.

Jojen tips him backward onto the furs and follows him down without thinking, freezing only when Bran reaches for his collar fastening, not because he reaches, but because he does it with shaking hands.

He stops. Turns and breathes against Bran’s jaw. Bran tries to follow but Jojen keeps out of the reach of his mouth.

“Wh — what is it?” Bran pants. Then he swallows carefully. “Did — was I…”

“No,” Jojen says, because he can’t stand the uncertainty in his voice. “It’s not — No.” Bran is still clutching at his front and he pries him loose, twining their fingers and setting their hands aside. “I can’t just…” He shakes his head. It’s so easy to forget with Bran, who watches and speaks so knowingly; easy even for Jojen, who was the same. Of course Bran has never done any of this. “Have you ever even kissed anyone?” he asks him, though the question is really rhetorical. He knows the answer.

Bran’s nostrils flare in obvious indignation, but he doesn’t deny it and he doesn’t push Jojen away. Jojen props himself onto his palms with a sigh and Bran’s hand twitches beneath his. For the first time since they woke, Bran seems to remember that they’re not alone, eyes darting to his sleeping brother. His flush is obvious, even in the dark.

“There’s a way this should be,” Jojen says, “the first time.” He shakes his head. “Your wedding night, perhaps.”

“My wed —” And Bran scoffs; he’s verging on angry, now. “I think we both know that’s not when this happens.”

Jojen bends until his forehead rests against Bran’s collarbone. He hasn’t had enough sleep for this conversation. Bran’s fingers thread restlessly into his hair and he shivers.

“You are young,” he says and he feels Bran stiffen beneath him and his fingers still.

“I’m not s —”

“Let me finish,” he says, and waits until Bran’s silence signals his consent. “And try to hear me. As you would wish someone younger to hear you. Do you understand?”

There’s a pause. The rain taps, trickling down the support beams. And then he feels Bran nod.

“I don’t doubt the sincerity of your feelings. I doubt that you understand them.”

“I’m —”

“That was not reprimand or insult. You said you would listen.”

He waits. Bran says nothing.

“Everything is new when you’re young. You feel things more easily, oftentimes even more intensely. But it’s…” He watches his thumb stroke over Bran’s, “It’s a flash fire.”

“You think I’ll outgrow this?”

Bran sounds more surprised than upset, and for that, Jojen counts himself lucky. “I don’t know,” he admits. “But even putting that aside, putting our positions and whatever either of us knows or doesn’t know about the future aside… at the very least, whether it seems like it or not, you don’t know me very well.”

After a moment, Bran asks, “Does it matter?” But it’s resigned, not naïve; a question of philosophy. “If I know I will.”

“Will you?” Jojen asks. “I won’t have you doing this because you think it inevitable. How would we ever know if we would have chosen it? And if we don’t know… I could have been anyone. And can be replaced by anyone.” He lifts his head so that he can look at Bran again, mouth hovering near his chin. “I need to know that you know why you love me. That I’ve done something to deserve it.”

Bran stares at his nose and his fingers tighten in Jojen’s hair. “I haven’t… said that.”

It should unsettle or embarrass Jojen, but it doesn’t. “Not yet,” he says sardonically and smirks.

Bran lifts his head to reach Jojen’s lips and Jojen melts against him, letting his weight settle again. Bran licks at the seam of his lips, learning already, and Jojen eases back with a wince, nose against Bran’s cheek. Bran allows it, at first.

“You’re not telling me everything,” he says.

Jojen swallows. “You sound like Meera.”

Bran tugs at his hair. “What are you so afraid of?” he asks, like he’s afraid to know. And he should be.

Jojen brushes his mouth against the warm skin of Bran’s neck, thrilling at the way Bran tips his head back. “Having you,” he says, voice wrecked. Bran’s breathing picks up. “And then losing you.”

He’s so afraid. Afraid of that. Afraid of the things Bran doesn’t know are coming. Afraid of Bran turning away from him when he finds out Jojen knew they were. Afraid of being the reason Bran can’t handle them, a reason for Bran to fail when they will all need him so badly to succeed.

Afraid of hurting him even more.

“So don’t lose me,” Bran whispers in his ear. 

It might be meant as suggestion, but it sounds like a plea. Jojen doesn’t reply.


End file.
